Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Yikes! I had sex with an Arab! אוי לי! שכבתי עם ערבי

It isn’t often that I blog first thing in the morning, but this news item has me so riled I won’t get any paid work done ‘til I’m finished sounding off. Imagine:

An Arab posed as a Jew so he could get a woman in bed. Oops! Honey, be more careful who you have sex with within minutes of knowing him. Well, apparently she hasn’t moved on: She pressed charges of rape and indecent assault (whatever that is; I suspect it’s a fancy term for miscegenation). But wait, it gets better: A judge actually agreed to hear the case. The verdict: The man was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

I call “racism”, and I don’t use that term lightly (I prefer “bigotry”, as “racism” is a victim of word inflation). But beyond the racism, thinly veiled as “protecting the public interest” (according to Jerusalem District Court Judge Tzvi Segal), why is there not a hue and cry from the legal community? This case should be published in the law school textbooks as the example of abuse of the justice system. The defendant has been under house arrest, wearing an electronic cuff, for two years. Show me a Jew in the same situation who would be thus detained. Not to mention the fact that the courts are overloaded and don’t have the resources to hear actual cases of injustice, for instance, those of women who suffer violence at the hands of their mates, or minors at the hands of their parents.

I cringe at the frivolity of the blog title. Nuremberg-type laws– or legal rulings– are a very serious matter in the history of a nation-state. It's clear that the animating factor here is not the sex, it’s the despised ethnicity of the poser and his fradulent claim to be a member of a different (more accepted) ethnicity. Sure there are outcries. But the ruling of even a single court suggests that Ya’acov Crow laws– and attitudes– have penetrated very, very deep. Doesn’t anyone see that it’s going to be very hard to turn this around?

I have the same gut reaction as you do to the case; but the fact is, both your end-of-posting tag ("Now is every woman whose sexual partner told her he's rich when he's not...") and the general message - that this is all or mostly about racism - are a bit off-base.

The precedent allowing Jasmine to press charges against Aladdin was already in place in Israel long before this case (see the case of Oren ben Avraham, mentioned in the same article). The courts were willing to make this same ridiculous and paternalistic ruling against Jews as well - and note that the deceptions involved in this case (for example, marital status) are not limited to ethnicity. Possibly the woman involved would not have gone so far as to press charges if it was a Jewish married man pretending to be single and looking for a lasting relationship - I can attest to that level of racism in Israeli society. But if such charges had been pressed against a Jewish man, I think the courts would likely have made the same ruling and reinforced the same precedent.

yam - i think you're way off base with this one. the fact that he is an arab is the minor point. the major one is that he is married and presented himself as single, interested in a romantic relationship. he broke the law by seeking and obtaining sexual favors (services?)by decpetive means. the woman's case - while she can be faulted for all kinds of things - is that she went to bed with him because she thought it might lead to a real relationship... had she known he was married - she wouldn't have. the press of course are blowing upthe arab-jew part - but in presenting himself as married he violates what seems to me a very good law preventing predatory males from using all kinds of means, not only physical violence on unsuspecting females. good call, judges...

Jeremy, while you present your argument well, and it does have merit, do you see where this ruling could lead? Not only was the ruling both paternalistic and racist (how dare those yucky Arabs try -- by any means, either honest or deceptive -- to touch "our women"), but again -- is it the job of the justice system to protect us from slimeballs?

"A society must protect its women"? Paternalistic much? As far as "What if she got pregnant. Yuck", I believe this issue leads us straight to "Who Is a Jew?". Do we now have a Yuck-o-meter for Jewish women's sex partners? Where is a non-Jewish Russian immigrant on the scale? The male spawn of a Jewish mother and an Arab father (or vice versa)? There are such creatures, you know. I don't even want to utter the words that're going through my head right now...eugenics...Aryan Nation...racial purity...

I must admit, if this case weren't so sad it would be laughable, for several reasons.

1. Let the buyer beware. The longer you know a liar, the easier you figure him/her out. While I am not judging this young lady on a moral standpoint, I am judging her for all sorts of stupid. She made (what was for her) an important decision within minutes. Bad idea for her.

2. What are the levels of lies that constitute rape? If a man were to have sex with a woman who has had secret and extensive plastic surgery, and the kids come out butt-ugly, can he cry rape? How about just a reductive nose job? Can he cry rape if the kids just have a huge honker? How about all those religious types that hide or refuse to diagnose mental illness in order to get their kids married off? Is that rape, too?

3. At what point does responsibility end? Isn't the woman an adult with reasoning skills of her own? Would the normal person expect honesty from a stranger enough to share bodily fluids with them based on easily hidden attributes? I mean most people don't have a flashing "Arab" or "Married" sign over their heads. These facts take some time to uncover.

4. I take this as different than drugging someone or physically assaulting them. In the former, the person's ability to reason is removed. In the latter, the person is denied choice. This woman had both the ability to reason, and the right to choose.

To anonymous. I hope you're joking. Women belong to themselves. If they want treif sausage they can bloody well have it. If they don't they need to take reasonable precautions, like know someone more than 15 minutes.

Well, that was my 2 cents. Oh, and why do I feel that this guy's wife is the real victim here? Her husband is a jerk, and now is in jail, leaving her with two kids to support.

Nina171 says:

When I got married, I didn’t even consider changing my name. My traditional father said, "I can't believe he's allowing you to do that." I said, "I would never marry someone who would think he had a say in the matter."